Years and years ago, the military started using nurse practitioners (NP) as physician extenders. Then they realized they were taking nurses away from the bedside, teaching them something that could really land them a good job in the civilian world and losing nurses. So they basically shut down most of their NP schools and started opening up physician assistant (PA) schools. I see the same thing with CRNAS and AAs. There IS a nursing shortage and it is only going to get worse. It is crazy taking nurses away from the patient bedside to make them CRNAs when there is an alternate way to get anesthesia providers without losing more nurses. (Here comes more arrows from my fellow CRNAs.)